The North Shore – Lake Superior
Grand Marais to Thunder Bay
August 21, Sunday: Gunflint Trail to Thunder Bay, Ontario (continued)
We drove the remaining 27 miles of the Gunflint Trail back Grand Marais to the North Shore Drive and headed north. We stopped at Judge Magney State Park to hike the falls, but it would have been a two-mile hike and I was getting over water-falled. We drove on up the North Shore Drive to Grand Portage National Monument. They had a beautiful new museum with exhibits explaining the 20 mile portage the fur traders needed to make to get around the Pigeon River falls and rapids. Grand Portage is the northern terminus of the United States portion of the North Shore Drive.
We crossed the Canadian border and arrived at Fort William Historical Park just west of Thunder Bay in late afternoon. Fort William is a privately owned attraction just outside Thunder Bay with costumed interpreters staying in character to show life in the headquarters of the Northwest fur trading company. Conveniently, they have an open field campground with electric hookups. A huge storm moved through at dinnertime, but it only dropped a little rain with no thunder or lightening – something we were concerned about being parked in a large open field. A couple of tv channels gave some news and weather and tomorrow looks good to tour the park.
August 22, Monday: Thunder Bay, Ontario
We spent most of the day touring the Fort William Historical Park. The park documents the Northwest Trading Company's major post after moving from Grand Portage, Minnesota to ensure they would be in Canadian territory after the Canada-USA border agreement. 
The costumed interpreters were very knowledgable about the trading post's way of life. A couple of weeks ago, they hosted the great Rendevous and PowWow for ten days – we're sorry we missed that.We left mid-afternoon to drive around the town of Thunder Bay. The town is actually two separate cities that merged together and is primarily a working class port, with much of the town in poor shape with lots of vacant stores. They had a pretty bay-front park next to the marina. We drove up to their Centennial Park for a scenic viewpoint of the Bay, Lake and waterfront.
We began our drive west through Canada and stayed at a park with wif-fi about 16 miles out of Thunder Bay.
